Strategy

The study of strategy is a daunting undertaking. Not only must students wade through the dense tomes of the strategy masters but they must also be alive to subtle nuance in the texts, attentive to the significance of word choice, and conversant in the influence of context on the strategists’ theories. Given this complexity, [...]

Strategic imagination is as important to the Royal Australian Air Force's future success as the innovation that lies at the heart of Plan JERICHO. In this post, Pilot Officer Oliver Jiang defines strategic imagination and explains the importance to developing problem conceptualisers as well as problem solvers. The inability of national intelligence agencies in the [...]

‘Anyone writing airpower theory today has a great deal of rewriting to do, because some large conceptual weeds have been allowed to prosper in airpower’s intellectual garden.’ Colin Gray, Airpower Reborn, 179. Giulio Douhet [Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons] When Giulio Douhet wrote and published Command in the Air in 1921 he did [...]

Recent incidents of civilian casualties resulting from air strikes in Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan have brought the spotlight back onto air power strategy and targeting in times of conflict. In this cross-post from ASPI's blog The Strategist, Andrew Davies reminds the reader that, although these incidents may rightly be condemned, history provides a cautionary tale of how the [...]

In the right circumstances Ground-Based Air Defence can be a game-changer. Given that the Australian Defence Force invariably deploys when it fights, it is a capability our defence planners need to take more seriously. The popular image of the fight to win control of the air is one of scores of fighters locked in [...]

The shift from analogue to digital technology that started in the late-1950s and gained serious momentum in the 1970s has now reached lift-off speed. Innovations based on this radical development include advanced computing, the internet, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Such is the magnitude of the change that these and similar technologies are driving [...]

Anti-access/area denial is not as new as you might think. Commonly known as A2/AD, "anti-access/area denial" has become a hot topic in recent years. Many have detailed the threats that A2/AD weapons systems pose to the US military, especially its aircraft carriers. But those threats aren’t new; A2/AD campaigns have been waged since the Greco-Persian [...]

US President Barack Obama recently suggested that the leaders of Islamic State “know they will lose in Syria and Iraq”, and that consequently they’re already “shifting their strategy” to accommodate that impending battlefield defeat. President Obama’s assessment was later repeated by the commander of Australia’s training mission in Iraq, who predicted victory by August [...]

By Editor|2016-09-26T13:44:59+00:00September 26th, 2016|Strategy|Comments Off on The ADF after Islamic State – Alan Stephens

“Strategy” is one of those words that’s used so widely and in so many different contexts that it often seems to generate confusion. That doesn’t need to be the case, as the nature of Australia’s long-running involvement in the wars in the Middle East can be used to illustrate. Writing in the Fairfax media [...]